by Rosemary Rawlins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2019
A heartbreakingly touching tale, historically intelligent and emotionally devastating.
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A young Cambodian girl’s life is upended by the brutality of war in this novel.
Sokha Sang grows up in Cambodia in the 1960s on a farm outside Battambang during tumultuous years of civil unrest and war. She lives a happy life, cared for lovingly by her mother, Davi, and her father, Boran, though at a very young age she begins to witness without comprehension the devastation of the war, seeing “bedraggled strangers” and whole families trying to survive. The situation grows precarious, especially after her father dies of cancer, leaving Davi alone to protect the family from increasingly aggressive refugees dislocated by the violence. Davi moves the family to the city in search of safety—they join Sokha’s sister, Mali, there—though the girl pines for the life she once knew and still loves: “Nostalgia for the farm washed over her.” But when the Khmer Rouge arrive, the family is eventually forced from that home as well, huddled into an unspeakably filthy “starving camp.” “Vicious soldiers” imperiously watch over them, and Sokha struggles to adjust to the cruel conditions of her imprisonment, a harrowing experience plainly but powerfully described by Rawlins. Only 11 years old when herded into the camp, Sokha offers a perspective that is a moving mixture of childish anger and precocious astonishment—she resists believing in the Communist ideology that delivers so much suffering, the “revolutionary mindset” she is tyrannically ordered to adopt. The author artfully contrasts the beautifully simple life the Sangs once enjoyed with the ghastly one paradoxically imposed by utopian rhetoric. This is a poignant emotional drama as well as an astute exploration of a sad period in Cambodian history.
A heartbreakingly touching tale, historically intelligent and emotionally devastating.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73349-310-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Rare Compositions
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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New York Times Bestseller
A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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